If Lakeshark has had a change of mind, we should think about letting bygones be bygones going forward.
I don’t know the history here, but there are a lot of people out there who may have come to this point by a very difficult, and circuitous route. It’s difficult to take something that is so steeped in the traditional way and change it.
Many of those people who thought (as I myself once did) that a vote for some kind of marginal candidate who had no chance of getting elected was no better than pulling a lever for the other candidate, will eventually have to (out of necessity) reevaluate their position, assuming they are introspective enough to do so. (Just an aside here, I’ve always thought that was one of the key differences between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives constantly have to examine and re-examine their positions because going against the grain requires it. Liberals completely lack introspection. They never, ever evaluate and reevaluate their positions.)
If conservatism is ever to succeed, we need to bring people to the trough, and allow them to drink. For many of us, drinking from a new trough requires that we often have to kill some of our own sacred cows to do so. It’s my opinion that we need to give folks enough room to slaughter those sacred cows in their own minds.
Just my two cents. Didn’t mean to intrude on something that sounds like it might have a little history behind it.
If Lakeshark actually had a change of heart and decided to rejoin conservatives, that would be great. But he hasn’t. In our arguement above, he said...
Saturday, June 29, 2013 12:32:44 PM · 106 of 466
Lakeshark to Norm Lenhart
Norm, if you weren’t so stupid I’d actually address your post.
If we were to follow your ideas, we’d get about 2% of the low fo right of center vote.
Now ‘my ideas’ art the ones we are all discussing (not that they are ‘my’ ideas, but the ones we are all talking about on this thread are the very things he has trashed me for, and others for, time and again.
Yes, there is a history and it actually began with us on the same team mocking PDSers for their MSNBC talking points. Since then, Lake and I parted company over Romney.
If you go into his post history, aside from his posting pix of Yosemitie Sam on a dragon and calling it intelligent political commentary, you will find numerous and repeated assertions that both principles and ‘purists’ are the problem. That’s his own words in his own posts, not me ‘claiming’ anything.
He repeatedly wants conservatives to sell out their principles to ‘win’. And many people did that over the years. myself included to my eternal shame. But we did it. And what exactly did that get us all? It got us a Congress full of unprincipled Republicans that vote with Democrats.
There is no need to go into great detail as all freepers know the plethora of examples showing these ‘winners’ are no different from dems.
But he has consistently screamed bloody murder that we keep doing it and trashing many freepers in very personal terms, for not going along. And as you can see in his post I copy/pasted, he thinks all the things we are discussing here will get us ‘2%’ of the vote.
No, he is the same Lakeshark he has been. And what he represents is the very thing we are fighting against. If he someday sees how destructive his beliefs have been to America and abandons the lesser evil path to socialism, great. But he has not. And people like that should be given no more quarter than Rubio. Because when he mocks all of us that say “Enough!” and continues spreading the gospel of ‘lesser evils’ the Rubios of the GOP are exactly the people he wants to continue in power. Simple Boolean logic.
You do not fix a problem by continuing to repeat the causes of it. Ergo, you do not fix a broken conservative movement, or country, by electing more of the people who broke it.